LSU baseball's analytics guru shifted his focus to pitching. Here's what that's looked like.

NORMAN, Okla. — This summer, Jamie Tutko came to Jay Johnson with a proposition.

Tutko, then the director of player development/video and scouting for LSU baseball, wanted to work more closely with the pitchers. He was a pitcher in college and his heart had always been on that side of the ball.

After a few staff changes resulted in an opening on the pitching side, Tutko took the opportunity to present his idea to Johnson. But it didn't take much to persuade Johnson to get on board.

"He was actually really fired up this summer," Tutko said. "And hopefully he's still fired up with it."

Tutko's new role is LSU director of development — pitching. The position allows him to almost exclusively work with LSU pitchers and pitching coach Nate Yeskie.

Along with Tutko moving into his new role, assistant coach Marc Wanaka's title also changed to director of player development — offense.

Tutko, Wanaka and the rest of the Tigers' staff will hope that their work will translate to the field this week when LSU begins its three-game series with Oklahoma in Norman on Thursday (6:30 p.m., ESPN2).

"There were some areas that me and coach Yeskie could really work well together," Tutko said, "and explore some, I wouldn't say different, but just some newer developmental ideas from the pitching side of things."

Tutko still prepares the scouting reports on opposing pitchers ahead of every game. Maintaining that responsibility means that he's continued to help Johnson devise the lineup and stands next to him in the dugout when the Tigers are up to bat.

But many of his other scouting responsibilities have been spread among other members of the staff.

"I love working on stuff with him," Johnson said of Tutko. "(We) work very closely together. I feel like he's so passionate about helping our players and our team that because of that, he's made himself better in four years. And I mean that and as a compliment because I already thought he was great."

Since Tutko and Yeskie have combined forces, they've heavily emphasized the importance of throwing first pitch strikes and throwing strikes on two of the first three pitches of the count.

They've also stressed the significance of overall zone percentage and competitive location percentage. The latter statistic measures the rate of pitches that are both in and around the strike zone.

"If you put a dot in the middle of the strike zone, and then you put a circle 17 inches around (that), (a pitch) inside that circle it's a competitive located pitch," Tutko said.

Tutko and Yeskie decided to narrow their focus to mastering those four numbers because that was "what the best teams in the country are doing."

"If we're going to do those things, then the strikeouts are going to happen, right? The weak contact, the lower walks, all of that is going to happen," Tutko said. "It's going to take care of itself if we just focus on a couple of different numbers that we hadn't put a big emphasis on in the past."

But reaching those feats is easier said than done. 

Walks have been an issue for LSU. The Tigers are allowing over four free passes per game. They walked seven batters Saturday against Mississippi State and seven more the prior Saturday against Texas. Free passes also nearly cost them a win over Missouri three weeks ago.

But Tutko isn't concerned about their control issues. He said the Tigers are not far off of their team goal of a 9% walk rate.

"It's something that we're continuing to grind at, and we're continuing to work at," Tutko said, "and these guys have have worked really, really hard getting to that point."

Tutko believes that commanding the ball is much tougher than it may seem, saying that major leaguers on average miss their pitch location by more than 12 inches.

"We will never stop pushing for command," Tutko said, "but (we need to understand) that commanding the baseball, even in the big leagues, is really, really, really hard, right?"

LSU's pitching staff clearly has enough talent — with fastballs that reach the upper 90s and pro-caliber breaking balls. The Tigers are tied for second in the SEC in strikeouts.

But has that explosive stuff come at the cost of walks and shaky control?

"When it comes to stuff versus command, ideally, you would want both, right?" Tutko said. "I'm not a believer that stuff is better than command, and I'm not a believer that command is better than stuff. They go hand in hand. It's just a matter of trying to get both of them for our guys. And it's extremely hard."

The difficulties that come with trying to command the baseball are why Tutko has focused a lot of effort on pitch sequencing. He sees it as the best way of giving his pitchers a greater "margin for error."

When Yeskie is calling pitches, Tutko is by his side helping him decide what their guys should throw and when.

"Pitch sequencing right and the usage and using the right pitches in the right times," Tutko said, "all that's going to do is just help get these guys' walk numbers go down."

The Tigers' staff is far from perfect, but it still is one of the better groups in the conference. LSU enters this weekend's series fifth in the SEC in ERA and fourth in opponents batting average.

Tutko intends on keeping it that way.

"He's a very valuable member of our team," Johnson said.